Early Exports
to England Heavy

The invention of the Whitney Gin, as we have just said, found the United States able to use but a small part of the cotton grown. What became of the remainder? Obviously, it was exported to provide the means for operating the English mills. Here is a table which shows how American cotton left the Southern ports for England and the Continent in the alternate decennial years beginning in 1790, three years before the invention of the cotton gin by Eli Whitney. The figures are exclusive of linters.

In 1910 American cotton made up almost exactly three-quarters of the whole amount imported into Great Britain. The other countries of Europe have developed a spinning industry by no means inconsiderable. American cotton is sent to almost all those European countries which spin and weave.

Such a movement had of course a profound effect upon the currents of world trade. The cotton crop is the second in value of all the crops produced in the United States, and such a large part of it is exported that the credit it gives to its sellers enables them to buy in return some of the most valuable of the products manufactured in Europe.

The following table gives the amount of cotton, expressed in the equivalent of 500 pound bales, exported to the various countries named in the decennial years:

WE have seen (page 5) that the world’s cotton crop is produced chiefly by the United States, with 56%; India, with 17%; China, with 13-¹/₂%; Egypt and Russia with 4-¹/₂%, the remaining 4-¹/₂% being made up by Brazil, Mexico, Peru, Turkey, Persia, Japan, and several other countries.

Primitive Methods of
Growing in India

India is the first country wherein, so far as we have record, the growing of cotton reached the stage of an industry. There conditions are almost ideal, apparently, for the production of a great crop; yet, for many years the crop was a small one, and was utilized locally in the domestic manufacture of the light clothing worn by the people. Nothing remotely resembling the present modern factory system developed during all the thousands of years that the Indians had the field practically to themselves. The plant grown in India for a long time produced a short, uncertain staple, difficult to gin and still more difficult to spin. The greater part of the cotton growing districts are still given over to the short staple varieties (about ³/₄ inch) but in recent years certain varieties of Egyptian and American cotton have been produced with some success. About 20,000,000 acres are given over to the culture of the plant, but the methods used are to a great extent primitive in the extreme. Most of the crop, being unsuited to the needs of the British spinners, is either manufactured in Indian mills, of which the number is constantly growing, or exported to Japan. Before the war, Germany was a large consumer of Indian cotton.

The figures given as representing the Chinese crop probably are not any more accurate than the usual statistical figures concerning China. The Chinese are still largely in the domestic system of manufacture, and much of their crop—probably a larger proportion than in India—is spun and woven in the neighborhood where it is grown, without ever appearing in statistical tables. The